Law for All? The First Thing We Do, Let’s Educate the Non-Lawyers

What are the public duties of law schools? Specifically, what duty, if any, do law schools have to educate people outside of the profession, such as clients, would-be clients, and ordinary citizens and consumers? Do law schools have a duty to promote public access to legal information and services?

Most of the recent call for U.S. legal education reform has focused on the interests of lawyers and problems of access to the profession, such as rising law school tuition, the contraction of the legal job market, and law schools’ duty to provide prospective lawyers with accurate job market data. Such concerns about “the economics of legal education” for lawyers are the subject of a recent letter from a coalition of legal academics to the ABA Task Force on the Future of Legal Education.

Of course, these are important concerns and accurate data is a public good. Most would agree that transparent reporting is one “public” duty of law schools. But are there not others—for instance, a duty to promote public awareness of and access to law and lawyers? If so, how might law schools, individually and collectively, begin to operationalize such a mission?

Professor Renee Newman Knake offers her vision in a forthcoming paper calling for the “democratization” of legal education. Knake argues there is an untapped market for legal information and services potentially worth billions of dollars, but this market is stymied by inefficient delivery and “a fundamental lack of knowledge among most of the public about law, lawyers, and legal services.” To address these problems, Knake urges law schools to “fuel innovation in new markets and in methods for delivery, thereby leading to greater public awareness of legal services,” and to “educate the public about law, lawyers, and legal services through programs that also enhance student learning.” According to Knake, by embracing the mission of public (non-lawyer) education, law schools can “match the demand for legal services with the ‘surplus of lawyers,’ potentially resolving the access-to-justice problem … once and for all.”

This is a beautiful vision—raising public awareness of and access to legal services—and one that Knake herself is helping to bring about. Her previous scholarship has focused on opening the market for legal services delivery by corporations, which she argues will “increase competition, drive down prices, encourage inventive methods for providing legal representation for those who cannot access or afford it, and create new jobs for lawyers.”1 In 2012, Knake and her Michigan State colleague Dan Katz founded the ReInvent Law Laboratory, which focuses on designing, building, and testing new tools for legal services delivery, as well as providing students with training for the “technology-infused jobs of the future.”2 Now, in this paper, Knake calls upon law schools to “band together in support of a systematic public information campaign” in order to nurture “public awareness about one’s legal rights and entitlements.”3

Knake is careful to tie her proposals for public education to the profession’s strategic interests, and emphasizes the potential upside of demand creation for law schools and lawyers. She pitches non-lawyer education as “non-sales selling”—a means of broadening law schools’ sales efforts “beyond those who will fill their seats in order to nurture demand for services from those who do fill their seats.” She points to the success of public education campaigns in increasing demand for professional services in other fields, such as psychology and mental health. And she highlights the ways that non-lawyer education could improve employment prospects for lawyers. Thus, Knake pitches non-lawyer education by law schools as a win-win proposal.

Yet Knake also draws on—and flirts with—a more radical vision of public education and empowerment that includes the power to disrupt the profession or even dispense with lawyers entirely. Even within the current system of J.D.-focused education, law school attempts to raise public awareness of legal rights can be controversial—just ask the Tulane environmental clinic.4) Moreover, Knake endorses limited licensing and urges law schools to develop training for limited licensing regimes. She cites Richard Susskind’s vision of the “empowered citizen,” who would use information technology to select the level of legal service desired, with the aim of increasing demand for limited and unbundled services as well as facilitating effective self-help. According to Susskind—and by implication, Knake—“we need to empower citizens to sort out some of their own legal issues.”5

Thus, Knake’s article is not only about the (who-could-argue-with) “democratization” of legal education and services. Her arguments also point to provocative and increasingly immediate questions about the redistribution of legal information and services, and law schools’ role in defending—or challenging—U.S. lawyers’ regulatory monopoly and lopsided orientation toward the highest-paying corporate clients.

This conversation about law schools’ distributive role is overdue. Law schools face inevitable downward pressure on the J.D. degree and an increasingly sophisticated and competitive market for personal and consumer services. As a strategic matter, I agree with Knake that embracing and shaping the liberalization of the U.S. legal services market is U.S. law schools’ best play. I also believe—and think Knake believes—that, as a normative matter, liberalizing the U.S. legal services market is the right thing to do. But make no mistake: embracing a mission of non-lawyer legal education and empowerment will encounter stiff resistance from many law schools and would-be reformers, who so far have been narrowly focused on improving job prospects for lawyers. So: three cheers to Knake for raising this issue. Here is wishing her fortitude in her mission!

See David Luban, Taking Out the Adversary: The Assault on Progressive Public-Interest Lawyers, 91 Calif. L. Rev. 209, 237-38 (2003) (“After the clinic successfully stopped a polyvinylchloride factory from locating in a low-income Black residential neighborhood, angry business groups complained to the Louisiana Supreme Court. In response, the court amended its student-practice rule … to make it harder for students to represent environmental groups.”

Richard Susskind, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services 238 (2008).

4 Comments

Tim Morgan on April 30, 2013 at 7:12 pm

In 1975 a UMich assistant law Dean told me that subject to accounting debate, an out-of-state law student paid for MORE than the cost of her or his legal education. Since then, I have reflected on the impact of the relatively low cost, to universities, of legal education — probably still true despite skyrocketing tuition. While lowering access barriers including self-help, then, it would be wise to raise the entry barriers for PROVIDERS of legal education. This “supply side” approach could work if universities were compelled to provide non-lawyer legal education while also educating intended lawyers. Grants to private institutions could impose similar conditions — perhaps by legal requirement. Such a regime would both further the goals discussed above and slow the oversupply problem.

Cathryn Miller-Wilson on May 4, 2013 at 1:43 pm

The concept of the “democratization” of legal education is an excellent one. I only write to add that making legal information available to the public is NOT a replacement for lawyers. As I stated in my forthcoming work regarding legal education reform, we have countless examples of well-educated, thoughtful non-lawyer advocates who are ultimately not able to get results for their clients due to their inability to represent a client in a forum where legal authority – usually in the form of a Judge – can actually Order opposing parties to behave a certain way. We can discuss, in another conversation, whether courts should be replaced by some alternative or whether non-lawyers should be permitted all the privileges of lawyers in a courtroom setting but for the moment, the ultimate ability to solve a legal problem – forcing a bank, for example, to comply with the law by not allowing them to enforce a predatory loan – rests with lawyers and courts. For this reason, “democratization of legal education” must include a plan to make lawyers available to those who cannot afford them – not just legal information. I worry that the well-justified enthusiasm for how technology can break down barriers and level playing fields will ultimately be used as an excuse by those in power to continue guarding the very best resources for themselves (which includes highly skilled lawyers) while simultaneously arguing that the poorest among us are being taken care of by the deluge of legal information available on the internet.

She is right it should be a win-win proposal, as being a common girl sometimes I feel the need of knowing some legal terms, some laws. And, if I need to know them then for that I don’t have any resource. The law schools should provide some facilities like the legal education so that the problems which are being faced by the common people can be reduced. And, while talking on a legal topic a person should become confident. I don’t understand what is the need of hiding the laws from the common people as they need it the most in their day today life, they should provided with the facility of learning the legal values. And, I also agree with the concept of transparency, all process should be transparent as this doesn’t contain any confidential thing.

“Democratization” of legal education is a excellent concept. I do agree that people need to be made familiar with law and what could be better than imparting them the legal knowledge. Yes, just by legal information available to public is not a replacement of lawyers, but at least a early exposure to law can influence many to take law as a career option. By this way it’s going to be a win-win situation for everybody as the Author said.

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